Thousands of people thought it was worth being arrested, imprisoned, beaten, starved, force-fed, to be killed, in order that you and I can vote. Which is why, when I hear anyone say it’s waste of time feel something more than anger. And when they say it’s a waste of time, that it changes nothing.

The social contract that we’ve lived with since 1945 is being dismantled in an unprecedented way. Did you know a Prime Minister (and, who knows, government ministers) can simply not bother to turn up before a Parliamentary committee? Me neither. Try to think of you or me saying we’re to busy to turn up in a magistrates court to give evidence, or too busy to turn up for jury service, or too busy to send our kids to school, or too busy to fill in tax returns…..Jeez. We’ve got a government that has declared itself unnaccountable, and is protected by a collusive media owned by self-serving oligarchs and plutocrats. And bastards. They’re selling your hospitals, making the ownership of your own labour a matter of legal dispute by crippling the unions, selling your local schools to trough-swilling profit-making firms who you can not question, screwing up your children’s education with imposed tests that prove nothing, that hinder learning and deprofessionalise teachers. They’re treating doctors as though they are disposable wage-fodder rather than the most-highly qualified people in the land.
What will it take to get the people of England to protest? You don’t have to go on the streets with mayhem and burning in mind. You can go and vote. It should be compulsory if you want to live in a mutually dependent society. But since it isn’t, just do it anyway. Take a friend. Take all your friends. make a day of it. Have a street party. But vote. Ordinary people were deported, imprisoned and killed just so you can.